Canada’s largest Muslim organisation is outraged over a bill introduced by the Quebec government that would ban headscarves for school support staff and students.
“In Quebec, we made the decision that state and the religion are separate,” said Education Minister Bernard Drainville, CBC News reported. “And today, we say the public schools are separate from religion.”
But the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), who are challenging in the Supreme Court the original bill that forbids religious symbols being worn by teachers, say the new bill is another infringement on their rights and unfairly targets hijab-wearing Muslims.
“This renewed attack on the fundamental rights of our community is just one of several recent actions taken by this historically unpopular government to bolster their poll numbers by attacking the rights of Muslim Canadians,” the NCCM said in a social media post.
This is not how Canada operates. Canada isn’t a melting pot.
I mean, according to the post, it’s enough of an issue to be made a rule/law. So don’t tell me there are no issues and that’s not how Canada works. Because apparently it does.
The law is specifically about arbitrating the display of religious symbols in government institutions in order to enforce visible separation of church and state. It’s not saying that Muslims have to adopt a different culture. Also, it could very well be unconstitutional. That remains to be seen but there’s a high likelihood.
Isn’t that a good thing? Not sure what you’re on about. Religion and state has nothing to do with each other and should be clearly separated.
Schools are government institutions to an extent. Unless you count private schools.
If I wouldn’t have gone to school, the police would have come and literally taken me there, by order of the state (government) so…
Religion is fine, just keep it private.
If you aren’t considering what the downside of this type of law is, then I don’t think you’re engaging beyond stating your beliefs. Clearly there are problems with it and people have expressed them. And as I said it is likely to be found unconstitutional.
You aren’t even Canadian, you are German. You quite literally don’t even understand that Quebec is simply one region of Canada and their culture is different from the rest of us in many unique and important ways.
I am not Canadian because I live in Europe? Wtf? I was literally born there lmao.
My apologies, I misread your previous comment to mean that you found this thread randomly from your front page, not that you are here because you used to live here.
Either way, you seem to have forgotten that what Quebec does on its own has nothing to do with the rest of us. They even have their own legal system.
Honestly it’s okay and I’m quite shocked by how this all turned out. All I really wanted to say is that religion and public institutions should be CLEARLY separated and have nothing to do with each other at all. And that oppression of women on Muslim countries and their diaspora is a serious issue at times.
I never meant to come off as antagonistic as I obviously did. But I get easily worked up about religious stuff. Now there’s no going back.
If it helps, I hate fundamental Christians that shove their opinion into everyone’s throat just as much.
Fuck me lol. I swear I’m not a racist bigot. I just want religion out of the public and for people to be able to live freely. And if that means some things need to be regulated, then so be it.
I also dislike religion and I’m with you on how harmful it is (raised Catholic, 14 years of faith-based schooling). The problem is the broad assumption that every Muslim woman is being coerced and then using that (wrong) assumption to force other women to wear (or not wear) certain things.
I would love it if all religion just like, ceased to exist one day. But we’re not there, so this law actually promotes religious oppression and, just like all other forms of oppression, I don’t want that for people, especially not in Canada. I don’t feel like banning head coverings actually eliminates the problem of coercion in Muslim communities.
I’m willing to admit that, yes, oppression of Muslim women is a problem within our borders (and Canadian women have been victim to honour killings on and off Canadian soil), but banning coverings doesn’t solve that problem. Banning coverings solves one problem for some women and creates a problem for others. I don’t think it’s good policy and makes Quebecers look even more Islamophobic than they did before.
I agree with you. It looks like I just hate Islam.
But it’s not true. I hate no religion. I hate when the religion is openly displayed. Keep that shit at home and all is good. This is 2025.
But I fail to see how banning it would create a problem for some women but not for others?
What could possible happen when they don’t wear a headscarf? I doubt they’ll go up in flames when sunlight hits. So I think banning it is the better approach.
One question that I would like to ask you is what could possibly happen when they do wear a headscarf? How are the people of Quebec being oppressed by just having these symbols visible? I don’t think they’ll go up in flames, either.
I can see how you would think that there’s no problem just doing it all at home, because materially you’re correct. But you also have to consider the effect of having to hide what you see as a fundamental part of yourself. I have a lot of religious people in my family and they really do see Christianity as a part of who they are. In some ways, you can see that banning religious expression is similar to the concept of cultural genocide as it has a disproportionate impact on religions with larger or more overt religious symbols with the goal of eliminating these “differences” so that these people can “integrate better.”
These religions just so happen to be primarily practiced by people that Quebecers often believe don’t belong here, there is a long history here that (IMO) was most noticeable in 2012 when Syrian refugees were given asylum in many Quebec communities. I think Quebec didn’t really care that much until “all the brown people” started showing up and wearing their coverings.
It’s my understanding that a head covering is seen as a sign of modesty, devotion to god, and being a conduit for goodness. If a person really does believe that, and sees the covering as mandatory, every time they’re not permitted to wear it will affect them emotionally and spiritually, especially in the sense that the god commands it and it’s not really optional if you are a devout person. In a school setting, a lot of kids were allowed to wear their coverings, to display and practice their beliefs, and now it will be banned. How will that not affect these kids and make them feel lesser than other Canadians?
To your point, the women that cover and do not want to will benefit from this law. Of course, that’s great. But how many of them are there? This law will either negatively affect or not affect more groups of women than it helps:
I also would like to point out that some Muslim men and boys wear coverings too, so this will also affect them negatively.
Though I can’t say for sure whether it’s really the same, I can see some parallels to certain other religious and even indigenous beliefs that talk about devotion, acting as a conduit for good in the stewardship of nature and humankind, and having a responsibility to keep this relationship alive by continuing to practice their religious and cultural rituals. This perspective is obviously complicated by the issues we have been talking about that occur in the Muslim community, but unfortunately I think we have a situation here where a religious institution has both good and bad elements.
All in all, my life won’t change with this because I’m not a Muslim and don’t live in Quebec. But the power of the state being used to ban certain types of non-verbal expression is like, really fascist and I’m endlessly disappointed in Quebec for being so scared of brown people that they’d ban all religious expression. I grew up in Brampton and knew a few people (boys and girls) who wore topi and hijab and it didn’t affect anyone else, so it’s just weird to me to restrict all people’s rights because of something like this.